I asked him on a Wednesday morning.Not planned and not because anything had led directly to it. He had mentioned the visit in passing, the way he mentioned it every month, brief and factual and not inviting anything, and this time I looked up from my coffee and said I would like to come with him if that was something he was willing to consider.He looked at me across the breakfast table.The silence that followed was not an uncomfortable one but it was long, longer than his silences usually went, and I waited in it and did not fill it because this was the kind of question that needed whatever time it needed."Yes," he said finally.Just that.We drove out on Thursday afternoon, an hour north of the city on a road that got quieter the further it went from everything, and the facility was low and pale and surrounded by gardens that were tended with the specific care of a place that understood the people inside it couldn't tend things themselves anymore.Dante said almost nothing on the
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